Breakin’ rocks in the hot sun I fought the law and the law won I needed money ’cause I had none I fought the law and the law won.~Sonny Curtis, 1958

I fought the law.

Perhaps a more accurate statement would be that the law and I engaged in standardized testing combat. I like the more generalized sound of fighting the law better, and anyone who has taken the modern bar exam is probably prone to agree that it’s certainly a fight by most definitions of the word.

Yes, the time to discuss the bar exam has come. If this post is like any of the other posts in which I discuss some big exam then it’s probably going to get tons of traffic. Sorry visitors, if you’re looking for some in-depth statistical analysis, or a spirit voyage of metaphorical mountains and life paths, this post ain’t it. Instead I’m just going to talk about the bar exam is, what it isn’t, and what my experience taking the damn thing was like. Mostly because I’ll probably have forgotten all of this crap in no time.

For starters, about me, I am not a shining example of the law student turned bar examinee. Go read through a lot of this blog under the “Law School” category and you’ll find that while I bitch and moan like the best of lil’ bitches, I’m pretty damn lackadaisical about the whole affair. That’s not to say I was always apathetic. Way back in the before times I took the LSAT and I went zerk’ over that shiny POS. Walked away with a 99.9th percentile score and said “Yep, screw that.” Then proceeded to be the most median of median law students to ever grace the hallowed halls of our pompous legal education system.

I’m more about the doing, not the circle-jerking in class and the dumb-ass exams. So I spent most of my time in law school doing and I accumulated a metric shitload of pro bono and client-facing hours, which was awesome and I enjoyed doing. However, the lack of my burning Crusade-tier enthusiasm for the RIGOROUS classroom environment extended to the bar exam when it came time to take that shit. In fact, I was so uninformed about the bar exam that I legitimately couldn’t have told you how they graded the damn thing. Seriously, raw scores, scaled scores? No idea what the hell that shit meant. I took Statistics and got an A+ in it… 6 years ago and have long since purged that information in favor of more important stuff like knowing when the best Steam sales are. To be ENTIRELY honest, I didn’t even know what score I needed to get to pass in my jurisdiction until like one week before the exam. It was that bad.

However, don’t think this is building up to some “I’m so gawd dayum awesome I didn’t even study for the bar because I’m just that kewl and I got a perfect score.” Ah.. no. In truth this apathy meant that I didn’t study as much as I should have, didn’t study as well as I should have, and ended up wasting a lot more time than I should have. In fairness to myself, I had a lot going on at the same time, but anyone can hide behind excuses. The fact of the matter is that I did studya lot, for me – but I basically threw the prep syllabus out the window on day one, ain’t no one gonna do 12 hours worth of shit a day, screw that. Well, lots of people do, but not Taco, he has some Witcher 3 to play since he delayed getting it for two damn years. This was, of course, all well and good until the dark specter of the bar exam got close enough that I could smell its ballsack (the bar exam has savage swamp ass). Once I realized that I’d somehow pissed away like 2 months of time working on unimportant things like preparing to move across the world (you know, totes meaningless stuff) and that the bar exam was only like 14 days away and was prepared to ravage my asshole.

That’s when I entered the “freak-the-fuck-out” stage, which I promptly answered by proceeding to not really change anything and to just ramp up the self-pity and emo darkness. But it sucked. I was scratching my hair out and shit.

I’d have avoided that massive bit of unpleasantness if I’d more proactively scheduled my time. So I’m not about to drop some massive-ass treatise on what to do for the bar exam, but I’ll say that – seriously – make a schedule that works for you. Don’t rely on someone else’s schedule. This isn’t like law school where you steal someone’s outline and pretend you made it because you added one case, make your own damn schedule, save your hair follicles.

This is all to say that going into the bar exam I was feeling a very odd mixture of “LOL DON’T CARE” and “I wonder which countries I can flee to to avoid my crushing student debt.” Maybe everyone feels that way, I dunno, but if so then I’ve been talking to the wrong people. On that note, when it came to talking to people about the bar exam I found myself more in the camp of “SHUT THE FUCK UP” and less on the whole “Let’s discuss estoppel by deed *fap* *fap* *fap*” side. This is why I have no friends and will die cold and alone.

But, it don’t matter how much you beg and plead, time keeps trudging along and before you know it it’s time to take the bar exam. While your exact venue will probably range from “shit” to “shit” you may soon find yourself standing before some massive room in a convention center or other suitable complex of misery, woe, and extremely unpleasant temperature extremes.

Inside you’ll see a variety of setups, but chances are it will consist of somewhere between 50 (Alaska) and 845,192,271 (New York) tables or desks.

My center was on the smaller side, but you get the general gist of it. It is among these wobbly tables and extension-cords-plugged-into-more-extension cords that you will take the bar exam.

But what is the bar exam? No, this isn’t some philosophical question that we shall debate long into the wee hours of the morn’ – it’s obviously a damn test. But like, what does it consist of, other than THE LAW.

Well. Not much. But it’s all about dat’ presentation. So here’s a plain English breakdown.

The bar exam varies depending on jurisdiction. Some states are what are called “Uniform Bar Exam” or S.H.I.T. states. For the purposes of this blog post, we’re going to be talking about the UBE because that’s what I took. If you want to read about a non-UBE state then just search for “Mr. Hands” on Google and I’m sure you’ll find something.

The UBE consists of three portions, spread over two days. There is also a third day in some states that focuses on satisfying some state-specific component of bar admittance, I had such a state.

It’s the first three portions that I’m going to discuss.

***

The first portion is what’s called the “Multistate Essay Exam” or MEE, because it’s uh.. given in more than one state. The MEE consists of a bunch of essays which COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY replicate real life, wherein you’ll face a legal issue and be unable to consult anything but memory to answer the question. Because that’s how the world works, no one gets to reference anything, ever. Thus the MEE is a completely realistic and accurate method of testing your ability to be a lawyer. Essay questions cover topics such as “Conflict of Laws,” “Torts,” “Masturbation,” “Wills,” “Real Property,” “Thermodynamics,” “Contracts,” “Evidence,” “G.I. Joes,” “Constitutional Law,” “1980s Horror Movies,” “Trusts and Estates,” “Why are there 8 hot dogs and only 6 buns,” and “Memomics,” just to name a few. Indeed, the MEE requires a vast array of knowledge.

While specific states vary, in my jurisdiction we had 6 essays we needed to answer. You are given a set amount of time to answer all 6 six essays, and time isn’t called for each essay. Therefore you must manage your time to answer all 6 essays. This can require a bit of triage since you might feel really confident about the “Sex Doll Laws in Soviet Russia” question, but you’ll miss it if you spend too much time on that pesky “Restraints on Alienation” question that came before it. Different jurisdictions grade the essays on different scales, but their all flawed and subjective as hell. For instance I don’t think my grader appreciated all the penises I drew in the margins, and those were some damn fine penises. Regardless of the specific grading scale the jurisdiction uses the MEE counts as 30% of your overall bar exam grade.

The second portion is what’s called the “Multistate Performance Test,” and seriously, what kind of shitty-ass name is that? So like, what? The bar exam is such a shit proxy for actual performance that you have to make a portion of test called the PERFORMANCE test? What the flying fuck. So is the rest of the test just unrealistic, incomparable, improbable bullshit? Oh wait, yes it is. This portion, the MPT for short, is also written as opposed to being multiple choice. However, rather than being presented with some fact pattern and then writing a little essay about it as you do in the MEE, in the MPT you do get some bigger fact pattern and then write a memo or brief or something about it. The MPT is also “closed” in that you are given a bunch of files and stuff that you have to read through, and you needn’t rely on anything outside those files to prepare the memorandum. The MPT consists of two such problems, so it’s like 700 pages long. Since the MPT is “closed” there isn’t a whole lot you can do to prepare for it like you can with the MEE, where a purchase money mortgage question is a purchase money mortgage question. You’re supposed to do like 4 thousand practice MPTs, but no, just don’t. Oddly enough I actually enjoyed the MPT portion of the exam because it was the only portion that seemed to even moderately have a real life purpose, yes I should probably kill myself. The MPT tends to be scored the same was as the MEE on a per-jurisdiction basis and counts for 20% of your final bar exam grade.

The third is what’s fittingly called the “Multistate Bar Exam” or MBE – such an original name. If you haven’t realized by now, the people who make the bar exam have no souls and therefore they just were kinda like “Ya know what, fuck it, let’s just call this the bar exam, bar exam – because we can’t think of some cooler name like ‘Multiple Choice Questions to Render that JD Useless.'” The MBE consists of 75,000 multiple choice questions and lasts for 600 hours – or at least that’s what it feels like. Also like 5 minutes into the MBE someone will finish and you will at first ponder killing yourself, and then them, and then everyone. Each MBE question consists of a bunch of answers all of which might be right, some of which are just more right than others, because where’s the fun in having you know, actual answers. The MBE tests basically every topic under the sun, so I hope you’re well versed in Ancient Babylonian Sheep Herding Techniques, because that is definitely gonna be on the MBE. Also you should probably expect some stupid topic your prep materials told you totally only shows up once every 20 years, because you’ll get 80 damn questions in a row about it and proceed to piss your pants right there in the bar exam as a silent but disgusting protest against the man. The MBE, despite being standardized bologna, is worth an astounding 50 freaking percent of the entire bar exam. So you can do really well on “babby-fills-in-the-bubbles” and utter shit on the MPT, and still pass. Makes a fuck load of sense that does.

Then there is that variable state portion I talked about, which covers topics/subject areas more specific to that jurisdiction. For instance in Vermont there is an entire day about Ben & Jerry’s Law and the Legality of Shooting Leaf Peepers. I’m not going to talk about that day because it’s just too varied. Just know some random stuff like when your state was founded and then proceed to write 15,000 words about why your state is the best state and you will undoubtedly fail probably pass.

Easy as pie – if the pie is poisoned, on fire, and rigged with explosives.

Of course the testing experience is just as much fun as the test itself! You probably have to travel, stay at an overpriced hotel, and then be at the exam center at 2:30am. On the way in you also need to donate a kidney to the bar examiners, but at least they let you pick which one (I’m pretty sure they eat them). Once in line and one organ lighter, you get to go through a variable level of security depending on your jurisdiction. Some places (*cough* Virginia *cough*) make you wear BUSINESS DRESS to this shit, because it’s not bad enough as is. But if you’re like most people and not taking the exam in such a fucking shithole fine example of statehood you’ll probably notice a couple of people wearing pajamas and then the rest will be decked out in paraphernalia for whatever law school they graduated from because vanity knows no bounds. I wore my finest. Which is to say I wore the only outfit I have. Seriously I wear the same jeans and shirt for a month at a time, ask SB.

You then stand in line from 2:35am until about 1:00pm and eventually you’ll make your way to a desk where some proctor whose soul died in World War I will make sure you’re not trying to smuggle some unholy contraband such as a GOD FORSAKEN PENCIL into the exam. There will inevitably be someone who didn’t follow the proper rules on Ziploc bag size and will be shot on site – be sure to step over the pooling blood and cranial fluid, it is oddly sticky. In my case there were uniformed police offers there too, because it’s not like there is anything better they could be doing with their time. Eventually after being stripped naked, anal probed, tazed, shaved, and given a burlap sack you’ll be able to enter the exam room which will either be -100 degrees or 200 degrees, either or. You may even be offered coffee, but that’s just to make you suffer more since you’re stuck in that room and can’t use the bathroom because this is the BAR EXAM and FUCK YOUR BIOLOGICAL NEEDS.

You then get to sit at your desk where you’ll spend the next 400 years. It will either be awkward silence as you don’t want to talk to anyone around you, or someone will try to talk to you and you’ll want to stab them in the face with the pen the armed SWAT team outside stole from you. You’ll sit waiting on everyone else to get signed into the exam room for anywhere from 30 minutes to 60 years. Eventually things will get started and the bar examiners will say a bunch of shit you don’t even care about. You didn’t come here today to listen to some 80 year old lawyer talk about the good ole days, you came to pretend you learned something in law school in order to give whatever institution you came from a brief boost of relevance in a dying world. THEN, after what you THOUGHT were the instructions, they will proceed to start reading you the actual instructions which will take another 5-6 hours and will cover such rigorous topics as “make your marks heavy and dark and don’t chew out your neighbor’s eyes.” However, just when you have figured out how to strangle yourself with that power cord from 1970 that has been strung across the floor with duct-tape, the exam will finally begin.

You’ll then feel a rush of adrenaline followed by alternating feelings of “FUCK YES I AM A LAWYER GOD” to “What if there was a grate at the end of the pipe and Andy Dufresne couldn’t get out?” Those latter thoughts are dangerous because they might cause you to ponder the philosophic question of why you are yourself covered in shit. Eventually time will be called and you’ll have answered somewhere between 0 and 1000 essays. However, since you started late due to the geriatric proctors you’ll have all of like 15 damn minutes to eat lunch. You’ll then be let loose into whatever convention-center type place you are taking the exam in and will see lots of happy smiling people.

Your fellow examinees will be happily chattering about the exam questions, which they know they aren’t supposed to do but they do anyways because they “cleverly” frame them in abstract and obtuse ways. Feel free to kill them if your character and fitness process is already over. If it’s not, just fuck them up real good but don’t kill them. Once you’ve inhaled your meager nutrition you’ll get to go stand in line again. Then you go inside and hear the instructions again. Then you repeat this for the rest of your life until you die.

That is legitimately the bar exam. It’s NOT some super magical awesome right-of-passage “muh fraternity” bullshit. It’s a test that doesn’t really test your abilities in a realistic manner. It’s just some artificial barrier to admission that costs a shit ton of money to take and is tacked onto an already problem-ridden legal education system. I’m not saying it’s easy, it’s not. Pass rates aren’t going to shit for no reason. But it’s NOT some metaphysical religious experience that tries your heart and soul on your passage to be the SWORD OF JUSTICE. Nah, it’s just a stupid test. If someone tries to argue otherwise, Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A is the answer.

Once the bar exam is over they inform you that it will take sometime between 2 and 4000 months to get your grade back to you, and that they’ll post a pass-list on the internet so that all your friends and family can easily check to see if you failed. Then, sometime after all that, you’ll have to go be sworn in. Depending on your state this will range from really easy, to gawd damn stupidly difficult – because magic words and mythical traditions are important and necessary after all.

In the meantime don’t worry about checking the online portal though, within 3 seconds of the names going live you’ll see all your law school acquaintances that passed posting “Annoying-bitch-of-a-Friend’s Name, Esq.” as their Facebook status. This way people know that they passed the bar exam and are definitely not insecure and dead on the inside and get by only through momentary flashes of pixels which equate to social validation on the internet.

If you’re fortunate like me you’ll have family and friends who leave you the fuck alone and let you tell them if you passed or not. But if you’re unfortunate they’ll be up your ass like wildfire, especially if they are too stupid to realize it’s all be plastered across the entire damn internet already thanks to the board of bar examiners. There is literally a “LOL UR KID DIDN’T PASS” website, thanks family.

However, you might also be fortunate like me and pass. If you did, I offer my sincere congratulations. Since states have different minimum passing scores, “passing” is different depending on the person. I did well enough that I surpassed the minimum score for every single state, that was cool. However, had I passed my jurisdiction by even 1 point, I’d still be happy. Truth is I don’t intend to bop around taking a bunch of bar exams, because holy shit I’d rather be reborn as a 8 year old one on of those ships that sank in the Children’s Crusade. The passing all jurisdictions bit just enlarges my wee-wee and is otherwise worthless.

If you did not pass, then I’m not going to offer my condolences, I’m going to congratulate you for putting up with that shit in the first place. Whether you decide to retake this dumb-ass exam, or move on with your life, I wish you the best either way. For those of you who stumble across this post while waiting on scores, for what it’s worth I thought I was going to fail for the entire waiting period. However, I was going to write the same post regardless. So please don’t feel like this facetious bit of word vomit is just because I passed, it’s not. It’s because this whole affair is stupid as shit and is part of an education system which is even more idiotic. I don’t think it’s really worth a super intensive post without incredulous overtones. So, if you failed, congrats on making it to the other side, even if it isn’t with the result you wanted. You gave it a shot, and that’s worth a fuck-load more than the person who doesn’t have any idea what you went through trying to give you some pep talk about failure (or even better, the lawyer who took the bar in 1947 and totally understands where you are coming from because nothing has changed in 70 damn years, nope). Fuck that. Congrats on what you did accomplish. Now either get back in the saddle or move on to something else, life’s too short to worry about some 200 year old proctor (who is probably a vampire, come to think of it) lecturing you about your damn cough-drops being in wrappers.

Regardless of pass or fail, the final answer is always the same:

Beer.

And that, dear friends, is all I have to say about the bar exam. My apologies if this post wasn’t what you were expecting, but I kind of like the way it turned out. If you need me I’ll soon be doing whatever it is lawyers do.

You can consider this post a sort of follow up to this post. It also seeks to address something that people tend to erroneously assume about being a freshly minted lawyer in the modern world. The assumption this time around is that you will, of course, make it rain.

So lets leave law school behind for a moment. Yes I know that is a little bit odd to do before its even really started, but much like my last 101 post (linked above), I want to address something. As soon as I started talking to people about my law school acceptances, there was an immediate assumption that I would undoubtedly be able to dance in piles of money. To be fair, there may once have been some grain of truth to this, but times have drastically changed, and they have changed for the worst.

First, not all lawyering jobs are created equal. That much is probably pretty obvious to most people. When you thing of the big firm partner, you probably think of mad moniez, but when you think of the “ambulance chaser” or the public defender you probably don’t see the same gold piles. Ironically “ambulance chasers” probably have the best chance to get rich, but also have extraordinarily high chances to live in a cardboard box as well. Taking this to be true, then you’ll also have to agree that not all law students will ever go on to make very much money. In fact, a fair number of law students will go on to make less money than you do. But, “Taco!” you say, “You told us that law school costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, why would you pay that much to only make 30,000$ a year!”

Why Indeed

The answer is twofold. First, for the vast, vast majority of people, its because they “strike out.” Which is basically a fancy way of saying that they either got a low-paying law job that they did not want and likely sucks, or they got no job at all and took their 1/4 million dollar degree and work at a job they could have got with their Bachelor’s. This is the sad state of the legal profession, literally almost 50% of the entire entering workforce will either get no legal job, or they will get an abysmally bad legal job. That is the “bad” side of the coin.
[Its important to note here, that these people were NOT necessarily lazy, many were very hard workers who simply lost the law school gamble, it can happen at any school.]

The other side of the coin is less negative, but still doesn’t involve much money. For the other low-earners, its actually something they chose. “WHAT!?” Yes, some people don’t make career decisions based on income, crazy, I know. These people tend to go into what is very broadly referred to as “Public Interest” work. If you are thinking that these are the Hippie Save The Whales Tree-Huggers, then you are not incorrect, but its also not the entire picture. Public defenders, (some) government workers, human rights workers, low-income councils, specialized agencies or firms, etc. are all included in public interest, or PI. Generally speaking, again very roughly, if the primary goal is not to make big piles of money, then its likely that you are in the PI area of the legal profession (which is opposite the “Private” sector). These jobs tend to pay way, way, way less than the private jobs. However, the caveat is that job satisfaction tends to be much higher for these PI workers. That likely comes from a myriad of reasons, largely having a sense of purpose outside of money, such as helping low income people fight off their abusive landlords. You might be thinking that this sounds not to bad, well it isn’t, other than that you make little money. However, don’t think that these jobs are easy to get. In fact, in an ironic twist, these jobs are often harder to get than the private sector jobs, because there are less of them and the people who want them, really want them. So, even if you want the low paying job, you have to work hard AND get lucky.

The opposite side of this is the private sector jobs. Now, there are a lot of these and many of them do not pay well. There are a few arbitrary tiers, such as “Shit Law,” “Small Law,” “Mid Law,” and “Big Law.” None of which have precisely defined borders, though most people will agree that you want to stay the living hell away from Shit Law. In a nutshell, shit law is basically all the drawbacks of the tiers above it, with only a scant portion of the pay. Does this mean that Big Law > All, well, it might for some people, but its not universal. Big Law is notorious for life-crushing stress levels. So, for some people Small Law or Mid Law might be better options, however, its HUGELY firm dependent. Law firms, even between tiers are VASTLY different work places, just the same as how Plumbing Company A might be 100x better to work at than Plumbing Company B. For the purposes of this discussion, we are going to focus on Big Law, which is the primary goal for most private sector seekers and is the most clearly defined.

Basically, Big Law = a “Big” paycheck, big hours, big stress, and big chances for upward and outward career prospects (IF you don’t get fired). Lets talk about each of these areas a little bit, starting with the good thing.

One thing that Big Law does well, better than all but the most esteemed of PI jobs, is give you a lot of exposure to powerful people who might end up liking you. This means you can lateral to better jobs, lateral to better fields, or simply move up the firm ladder. None of this is guaranteed (in fact some would say its unlikely) but the chance is there. The better the firm, the better the connections. Pretty straightforward. By and large, this is the one true, largely uncontested, advantage of Big Law.

However, the rest of the picture is pretty bleak. First, stress is amazingly high in Big Law. Additionally, if you get a “bad” firm, or even are placed under a “bad” partner at a “good” firm, you will very likely be verbally abused on a daily basis.

I’m not talking: “Oh mer gehrd my boss hurt my pansy feelings!”

I’m talking: “What the f*ck you stupid piece of shit, why was that brief not sent to the client by 8am. You must come from a filthy scum-filled inbred, worthless goat-f*cking, family. Holy hell what a moron.”

On a daily basis.

And no, I’m not making this up. True, its one of the more extreme examples, but Its part of the culture of Big Law, its the Good Ole Boys club to the extreme and if you make the wrong kind of waves you can easily kill your entire career. Furthermore, the work itself is stressful on top of the environment being stressful. Most people can’t and don’t handle it and end up exiting stage left, if they aren’t fired first.

The stressfulness of the work also means you have a large workload. 40 hour weeks do not exist in Big Law, 50 is considered lucky, 60 (or more) is the norm. Sure, this isn’t especially unique, lots of fields work the same or more. But its just something to take note of, because it means you’re dealing with that stress for 60 hours a week, not 40. Coupled with the “billable hour” (which is basically that time that you can actually bill a client) your “big” salary ends up breaking down to a lot less per hour than it might initially seem.

So lets get to that juicy salary.

MAKE IT RAIN AM I RITE!?! I RED ON TEH INTERWEBS DAT LAWYERS MAKE LEIK 160,000 DOLLARS A YEAR RITE OUT OF SKEWL. WOOOO DAYUM. MUST BE NICE TO BE RICH WITH NO EFFORT. AM I RITE!?

If that is what you think, kindly go smash your face into a wall. I can wait.

Thanks.

So what is the deal. Maybe you did read that new lawyers make 160,000$ a year and you did read it at some reputable site like Weekly World News or The National Enquirer. The truth is, some new lawyers do make that much. The operative word is some. Not all, not most, some. It might also be easy to think that these “some” is all the people at the top schools. Nope, also not true. While it is true that the tops schools put you in a much better position that low ranked schools (possible vs. impossible), its not a given. The truth is, the vast majority of lawyers make nowhere near 160,000$ a year starting out.

“Yes, yes, but some do, so blah.”

Ok, that’s fair enough. Yes, some do. But, if you’re going to base your idea of starting legal profession earnings on the highest earners in the profession then you need to be realistic about it. First of all, 160,000$ does not exist everywhere. You won’t be working in ultra-low cost of living town in Nebraska and make 160,000$. Most of the 160k jobs are centered in the major markets, such as New York City, Chicago, LA, DC, etc. Of these major markets, NYC is the biggest, so we’ll focus our attention there (since its where a 160k earner is most likely to be).

Starting out, you have your 160,000$. But it gets better! Depending on your firm, you’ll probably have a bonus on top of that. (CRAY-CRAY I NO). These bonuses vary greatly, but since we’re maxing things out, we’ll look at the high-average bonus of 10,000$. To make things easy, we’re going to lump this into the 160,000 to make a starting salary of 170,000$ for our recent law graduate. Because they got that sweet Big Law job, they live in Manhattan because they work 12 hour days and don’t have time to commute from the cheaper areas of the city.

So, 170,000$.

Now, its time to pay the tax man. There are a lot of calculations to be had here. I’m too lazy to type them all out, but trust me I have researched this. You can either accept what I say is true, or go research it yourself. The choice is yours. But basically, it boils down to this. That 170k is going to turn into 100k if you are married or around 93k if you are single. If you think that is insane, then you don’t know NYC taxes. Since I’m married, we’re going to assume 100,000.

170,000 – Taxes = 100,000

Aww yiss. 100 grand. Bling bling holla.

Hold up dere. You’ve forgotten something important. Loans. Oh yes, those things. Remember, in all likelihood the person who is now making 100k how loads of student loans from law school. We’ll take a high end debt, since we took a high end salary and say 250,000$. This would assume “sticker” cost of attendance at a law school. Now, again, loads of variables here. A lot of it depends on your repayment plan. Since you are on a big law salary, you’ll get no loan assistance like the PI people will. However, to keep things simple, we are going to say you are paying 30,000$ per year in loans, which is probably the around the minimum you could pay can not get in trouble.

So, 100,000 – Loans = 70,000

Ok, 70,000$ not bad. Not great in NYC, let alone Manhattan, but not bad.

Cost of living time, yay! To live an “average” (i.e. frugal by most standards) life in Manhattan, between rent, utilities, food, etc. will probably cost you around 42,000$ per year.

So, 70,000 – Living = 28,000

Alright, 28,000 in da bank each year! Nope, sorry, not done yet. If you have any sense, you’ll also have things like a 401k. This will probably take around another 15,000$ each year out of your salary, if you go with low contributions.

So, 28,000 – 401k = 13,000

Ehh. But wait, we still are not done. There are those lovely miscellaneous expenses that crop up in life. We will go with a lower number on these to play it safe and say 4,000$ (remember everything costs WAY more in Manhattan).

So, 13,000 – Unexpected expenses = 9,000.

There you go.

You work around 3,240 hours per year, to save approximately 9,000$. That is your discretionary income. That 9,000$ is what you get for an entire year to either save or spend on something like Netflix. Suddenly you don’t seem so rich. My guess is that if most people who make far less than a gross of 170,000$ engaged in the budgeting required to have 9k to spend on the part of our law student, then they would end up with far more than 9k. Its also important to keep in mind, that this is assuming minimum payments on your loans, which means you’ll be paying them for up to 25 freaking years in many cases (and that’s assuming you can actually pay them). And oh yeah, they can’t be discharged until you die or become extraordinarily disabled. Bankruptcy won’t even begin to save you.

Now, you might be thinking that 9,000$ in discretionary income per year really isn’t that bad, especially compared to most people. I won’t try to lie and say it is. It gives you around 166$ a week to spend or save. But what I cannot stress enough is that that is based on minimum loan payments. The overall point is thus, you will NOT be making it rain with your 170,000$ a year salary.

So, to bring things around. You really have three options as you enter the legal profession, which place you end up is based both on skill and luck (possibly even more so on the later). The first option is either a non-legal job or a bad private sector legal job. The second option is a low paying public interest job. The third is a “high paying” good private sector legal job. The thing you’ll notice about all these options is that none of them make you rich.

[Side note here. If you are wondering how the public interest people survive, its because of school or governmental programs that assist them repay their loans. Without these there would literally be no public interest people except for those who were already wealthy, which isn’t exactly ideal (since the rich already run everyone’s lives enough as is.)If you are wondering how the “struck out” low income people who aren’t in jobs eligible for repayment assistance survive, the answer is a morbid “sometimes they don’t”.]

Now, to be fair, this post doesn’t focus on the entire picture. Overtime your salary will increase. Or, you may live in a cheaper area (but won’t make as much). The reason that isn’t problematic to assume that you’ll stick around long enough in a high paying job long enough to get those raises is that you likely won’t. Attrition rates for many firms are around 2/3 at the three year mark. Meaning around 66% of people never make it past three years in Big Law. Yeah, its that bad. Now, these outcomes are not always that they were fired (though many are, its the nature of the system – not necessarily that they are “bad” employees – its a tiered system where they need to keep the bottom level workers are constantly being rotated out so that those on top can keep their places, a pyramid of sorts). Some go to other jobs, which almost always involve a drastic pay-cut, thus making the argument that they will make more over time a moot point. The PI people will make more as well and are less likely to quit or be fired, but they still are making nowhere near 160,000 or even 100,000 a year. In all likelihood, the PI oriented folks might end up slightly worse off than the Big Law people from a financial standpoint, even with the loan assistance (at least for 10-20 years or so, depending on how long it takes their loans to be forgiven).

My closing point is thus. Most lawyers are nowhere near rich. In fact most lawyers have less money to spend or save than you likely do. If they are diligent, frugal, and intelligent about how they proceed through their first few years, they can and sometimes do end up doing well. But the chances of them being “rich” are in all honestly no more likely than any other person. The gilded age of every graduate of a top school becoming a wealthy partner at some world-famous firm is gone, if it ever even existed.

Murkan’ Dream Yo’

Like my last 101 post, I will end this on a positive note. Just like the 160,000$ number is ordinary, so too is the 250,000$ debt load. If I am lucky, I’ll be around 100,000$ short of that number. So while my debt will still equal an invisible house, it will be a slightly less nice invisible house. Though there is also SB’s debt to contend with, but she’ll be earning money as well, so it keeps a lot of my equations fairly the same.

The above is the pile of bling that I will never have. 🙂

But there are more things in life than money, even for lawyers (at least those lawyers who actually end up satisfied with their lives). Squirrels are a good example, or any other cute critter, such as baby sloths.

Alright, this is a post that I’ve been meaning to write for a while but haven’t had the time. Honestly, I still don’t entirely have the time but I’m going to write it anyways because its an important post. What I’m going to attempt to do here is answer some questions I’m regularly asked as well as attempt to clear up some ongoing confusion about law school and the legal profession, at least as much as I can from my current position. My hope is that this initial post will serve as a good reference post and springboard for future law school related postings.

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I am a law student. True, I haven’t started school yet, but its pretty close [Actually by the time this is posted I will have started school, and then some]. More importantly I’ve been billed by the law school, so that makes me a student by default. How I got to this point is quite the long story that I won’t be sharing in detail here. The reasons for that are twofold. First, its a personal story with person motifs and honestly its not the blockbuster adventure you might think it to be. Second, it would take too long to type and I really start to burn out the longer a post dredges on. What I will share is a very nutshell version of the overall process that has gotten me to this point as well as look towards the future.

The Beginning

In order to get to law school, you have to go through undergraduate school. Now, this part is pretty straightforward for a law school bound individual. You simply go to undergrad, for whatever you want to study, and maximize your GPA. That’s pretty much it. There is no required path, no set schedule, just graduate with a GPA as close to 4.0 (or above) as possible. This differs from other professional schools such as medicine which require a more specific group of classes. Law school is not that way. Sure, majors such as Political Science and Criminal Justice tend to disproportionately sway towards law school (and interestingly enough CJ majors tend to do the worst on the LSAT), but there are no hard requirements. While its good to get lots of writing experience, a high GPA trumps most things. Sounds simple enough right? Well, it should be, except for that thing we call life. I ended up with a decent GPA, enough for institutional honors, but it was still pretty bad by top law school standards. This was compounded by the fact the LSAC (Law School Admissions Council) computes your GPA in a different manner, which ended up lowering mine beyond what my undergrad had calculated. So I had my GPA, which was not great by top school standards. This meant I needed a great, if not amazing LSAT score to go to a top school. But before we get to the beast that is the LSAT, lets first discuss why I cared so much about the rankings of a law school.

Why Most Law Schools Suck

Law schools are not all on level footing. While some are solid educational institutions, others provide less opportunity than jumping off of a bridge. You might think I’m joking with that statement, but I’m really not. In the good ole’ US of A, there exist 203 law schools which have been accredited by the ABA (American Bar Association). Which, is probably in the vicinity of 150 too many. Beyond these 203 accredited schools are few unaccredited schools which aren’t even worth discussing. While 203 schools might not seem too bad if you are thinking about what kind of intentions they have (such as serving a small, specific community, for example) that is leaving out a huge portion of the picture. Namely the INSANE cost of law school.

The average total cost of attendance (factoring in tuition, living expenses, etc.) for a law school in 2014 is somewhere between 210,000 – 250,00$. Yes, you read that correctly. Plus, you have to keep in mind that this is student debt, so you are only getting rid of it by dying, becoming seriously disabled, or paying it off. Now here is the kicker, that cost is fairly static across all schools. So, the number one ranked school might cost you 250,000$, but so too will the school ranked 203rd. Now, lots of people get scholarships in some form, such as myself. But large numbers of people are stuck at “sticker” debt. Even if you factor in a larger scholarship at the 203rd ranked school (which often isn’t even the case) your chances of a good outcome from that school are infinitely lower. Since law school is a professional school, you go to get a job. Sure the J.D. is there, but really you are just sitting yourself up for the bar and then a job. So, you want to go to a school that will actually lead to employment. Unfortunately the sorry state of our law schools means that for a large chunk of law students, this will never happen. A really good website for tracking employment information is Law School Transparency. Now, Law School Transparency (LST) is good, but it still has its flaws. That being said, its about as good as it gets for the public eye as far as law school stats go.

So, using LST lets compare a few employment percentiles. You may think that even the bad schools employ at least a good chunk of their class, I mean these are lawyers right? Bling, bling, models and bottles. Nope. Some schools only employ21.9% of their entire class 9 months after graduation.Yes, you too can pay 250,000$ to get a 21.9% chance to have another chance to get a decent job or more likely end up in a horrible bottom level legal job that will never, ever, pay off your debt. Of course even in the upper echelons of law schools not everyone makes it. The highest class employment percentages are around 95%. Which means that even students who go to the best schools in the world are not guaranteed a job, let alone a good one. However, you can clearly see the difference here. If you wanted to be Joe. Lawyer, would you rather pay 250,000$ and have a 21.9% chance of getting a job, or pay 250,000$ and have a 95% chance of getting a job. You don’t need to be a gambler to understand those odds.

This brings me back to my statement about why I care about the law school rankings. While the rankings are horrendously flawed in and of themselves, they tend to reflect the ability of a school to place graduates into jobs. Whether this is a bidirectional relationship is up in the air and a matter of much debate. Regardless, love them or despise them, the rankings matter. So of the 203 schools which are worth going to? Well the answer is not as clear cut as you might imagine. Traditionally schools were divided into four tiers, T1 (1-50), T2 (51-100), T3 (101-150), T4 (151+). Of course these are really arbitrary for a variety of reasons. Namely that a school ranked 50th might be way worse in a multitude of things than a school ranked 60th, despite the former being in a higher tier than the latter. Furthermore, simply looking at tiers misses a big portion of the picture. If you want go work in say, Chicago, if you went purely on the rankings it might make more sense to go to a school ranked 30th in Georgia than a school ranked 90th in Chicago. However, this would be absolutely stupid. While the school in Chicago is ranked lower, it has local ties and networks. No one, at all, is going to care that you went to a 30th ranked school in Georgia, it will be largely worthless to you in the Chicago market. This is largely true for all the schools, with the exception of a few schools towards the top, which have “national” rather than strictly “regional” networks.

These schools are illustriously (and sometimes mockingly) referred to as the “Top Fourteen” (T14). These schools, unsurprisingly, are the top fourteen ranking schools out of the 203 accredited schools. And, because we like to rank things, even the T14 is further broken down into its own series of ranks. While these inner ranks are hotly contested, at least one fairly generally agreed on divided is that you have the “Top 3” and then the “rest” of the T14 (but even this is contested). Much like the macro rankings, you can’t break the T14 down to a purely linear equation. The school ranked 12th might be a far better fit for your goals than the school ranked 6th. It depends on personal paths and scholarships. The closer you get to the top the more defined choices become, but they are never concrete. In a nutshell, these top schools give you a better chance to do everything, everywhere, especially the Top 3. Because I am not entirely sure what I want to do, or where I want to do it, a higher ranked school was the best bet.

[A big decision many students have to make is between a higher ranked school with a higher price tag, or a lower ranked school for a lower price tag due to a scholarship. Its a very difficult decision with a massive number of factors in play. My situation worked out in such a way that the higher ranked schools were clearly favored both for potential and cost, but even then choosing between them was extremely difficult]

So, my big point for this section is that not all schools are created equal, some are so bad they’ve been sued for their practices (which include flat out lying) while others have done fairly well even in the economic downturn.

The Law School Admissions Test (aka Puppy Killer 2000)

Now that I’ve discussed why choosing a school is a big freaking deal, lets backtrack for a second to the LSAT. This test, which is required for all but a few law schools (so its required unless you love unemployment), is one of the steps to getting into law school. Like I mentioned earlier, you need a GPA. Once you’ve gotten your GPA, you need the LSAT. In addition to those two things you need what are referred to as “softs” which are things like life experiences, employment histories, awards, etc. They are hard to quantify and I won’t discuss them here, just remember that they are the third component and they are important, especially the closer to the top of the rankings you get. The LSAT is much more concrete. It is the first major gatekeeper to the legal profession (the second being the Bar Exam, or law school itself, depending on how you look at it).

At its core, the LSAT is a standardized graduate admissions exam, like the GRE, MCAT, GMAT, etc. What is different, or at least exaggerated for the LSAT is how many questions most people miss. The average student will miss around 55-56 questions, out of100-101. Yes, that means the average LSAT score is an F if you were to grade it in a traditional manner. It is a hard test, learnable, but hard. Yes, yes, Joe Schmoe has a friend who scored a 180 (highest score) after studying for 2 hours beforehand, I know and yes, yes I know you can’t prove he exists. But for most of us mere mortals, the LSAT involves a shit-ton of studying, or you could not study and do bad (again, if you love unemployment). Its hard to guess how many hours I studied for the LSAT in total, but lets just say it was a lot. Of course it paid off for me in the end, in that I scored above the 99th percentile (twice), but it was a long road.

The test itself is composed of three basic parts: Logical Reasoning, Analytical Reasoning (Logic Games, but not “Games” in a fun way, trust me), and Reading Comprehension. You can read what LSAC has to say about them here. I’m not going to go into much detail about how the test is structured or how each section unfolds. If you are really interested, there are 90 billion pages on the internet discussing this test in depth. This is because the test eats into your core and tries so very hard to define and defeat you. Because rank matters so much with law school and because your LSAT score ties so closely into your future school, its easy to base your entire existence on your ability to do well on this test. In truth, its just a test. As soon as I realized that I kicked its ass (with ups and downs and countless hours of studying, of course). If nothing else, you can say studying for the LSAT is a much a lifestyle as it is an action. People obsess over the test to the most minor of details, even going so far as to wage heated and philosophical debates over which pencils are the best.

The LSAT is a curious, lovely, horrendous, and powerful beast. It literally destroys dreams as well as creates new ones. It is something that must be done, and I dun’ did it. That being said, I honestly would not do it again, seriously.

Law School Itself

Now, I can’t comment on this a whole lot just yet, but I have a few things to share. First, law school is hard. Statistically people do worse in law school on average than in any other graduate or professional school. This might be a sample issue, but this applies unilaterally across all schools. So even at the best of the best schools people do worse than their peers in other fields. This isn’t to say that the student bodies are ill-prepared either. At most law schools, especially the top ones, the entire study body is composed of the best students from their respective schools. So, when these students who are used to being the best get thrown into a grade-frenzied pit full of other people used to being the best, a massive shitstorm ensues. This is compounded by two factors.

The first is that classes are on forced curves. This means that if you have 80 students in a class, the number of people who will get an A is determined before class even starts. This means that you are in real, direct competition with your classmates, likely to a level like never before. This leads into the second factor, in that grades change your life. At any school, the top 10% of the class will be afforded opportunities that the bottom portion of the class will never have, ever. This normally translates into better jobs. So, in order get the good jobs, you need a good class rank, which means good grades, which means you are savagely competing against your classmates for your future. 90% of the incoming class will want to be in the top 10%, you do the math on that one. In addition to this environment being terrible, you have the difficulty of the material itself. So all in all, “havin’ fun.”

When you start this three year long hot mess, you are what is referred to as a 1L, then you go on to become a 2L, and finally a 3L, pretty straightforward. The adage that goes along with each year is as follows:

1L: The first year they scare you to death
2L: The second year they work you to death
3L: The third year they bore you to death

Now, each of these sayings has a plethora of reasons behind it, but rather than share them here, I’ll share them as I progress through the stages myself, it will be more natural that way. In a very basic way, 1L your grades are insanely important for jobs, 2L you are loaded with even more difficult work and activities, and 3L you might already have a job and just want to get the f*ck out of law school.

Beyond Law School, the Legal Path

While I’m still relatively early in the process, I’ve done a lot of reading of first hand accounts of what the legal path and profession entails. While entire books could be written (and have been) on the subject, I’ve broken it down into a simple flow chart made with over 9000 hours in MS Paint. Its pretty self explanatory (remember you can click photos to make them larger).

The basic gist of the flowchart is that things are, as a whole, not good in the legal field. For many people they would have been better off never starting law school in the first place. Additionally, many people who do start down the “core path” seen above, end up falling off at some point and are placed in a bad situation. For those who make it to the end, you still have a chance of ending up in a bad spot. For those who make it to the end and end up “neutral” the ultimate goal is often leaving lawentirely. So why do it in the first place? Well, the answers are many, the good answers few. For some its power and “prefstige,” for others its money, for others its opening doors, and for some its simply because they had no idea what else to do.Many times the well paying jobs are horrible and eat your life, while the less stressful jobs pay you so little that you have to rely on loan repayment assistance programs to have any chance of ever breaking even. To say that the path inevitably leads to sunshine and happiness is a grave error. All in all, if you take anything away from the chart, it should be that once you are in law school, you’ve pretty much committed yourself to a long dangerous path. So if there is any true hesitation during undergrad or while taking the LSAT, its best to bail out then.

In Summary

I’ve written a lot above. But it should have addressed several things that people have frequently asked me. Most importantly, it should have erased the notation that I’m on some glorious golden path that leads to boundless wealth. The sad fact is that even for people in my position, the chance of failure is still present. Granted, I’m situated much better than the vast majority of law students ever will be, but for all intents and purposes the battle has only just begun. So just remember, that when this image happens come up in your mind when you think of me and law school…

…it is important to remember that all I’ve really unlocked with my “golden ticket” is the opportunity to have a chance, nothing is a given, not even for students at top law schools. That being said, with a lot of hard work and a fair amount of luck, you can indeed end up much better than you started, so its not totally hopeless 😉